


When you try to come for me, I keep on flourishing

by Calliope29



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aunt Peggy Carter, BAMF Peggy Carter, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), F/M, Fix-It, Godmother Peggy Carter, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Italian Tony Stark, Kid Tony Stark, Kinda, POV Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers Feels, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, there we go that works I guess, why isn't that a tag guys come on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-10-01 19:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20381479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calliope29/pseuds/Calliope29
Summary: “And now, I’d like to invite Margaret Carter’s godson to come up and say a few words.”A pointy elbow prodded at his side. Steve tilted his head towards Sam, a questioning furrow in his brow. Sam, with wide eyes, jerked his chin at the podium subtly, and Steve finally turned his gaze where he’d been avoiding.It was Tony. Tony Stark was standing at the podium in a sharp suit, dark tinted glasses pushed up high on the bridge of his nose.-“You never told me you knew Peggy,” Steve said, quiet voice still carrying in the empty space.Tony was staring at his hands. “Knew her?” he mumbled like the question amused him. Finally, he looked up. Steve had never seen those brown eyes so black. “She practically raised me, more than Howard ever did.”“You know,” Steve found himself saying. “If I never went into the ice, you’d probably be my godson too.”-Based on the prompt: Peggy is Tony's godmother





	When you try to come for me, I keep on flourishing

**Author's Note:**

> I saw this prompt awhile ago on Pinterest and commented something like "if no one writes this I want it so bad I will" and totally forgot about it. Except, every couple of months I get a reply on that comment asking if I've written it and demanding a link if I have. And you know what? I got sick of feeling guilty. So here we are

Steve couldn’t remember how he got to London. It was like one second, he was staring down at the devastating text on his phone, and in the next he was a pallbearer at his first real love’s funeral. He knew he must have told the team, that me must have pulled a suit from his closet (or maybe Natasha did since he’s sure it’s the one she’s told him many times accentuates his ass), that he got on a plane and that he got off a plane, but none of it had registered. It was like he was watching a movie of someone else’s life and a stranger had edited the clips together.

He wanted to disassociate through the funeral too, but he knew he’d never forgive himself if he did. It didn’t stop him from keeping his eyes downcast for a lot of the service. He just couldn’t bring himself to look at the picture they’d chosen for her memorial. An old black and white photo of Peggy in her uniform. Her skin was smooth, and her eyes were perfectly aware, her hair perfectly coifed, and her lipstick a deadly shade of red.

Or at least, he knew it should be a deadly shade of red, if it weren’t for the greyscale of the photo. He could still close his eyes and see it. If he tried hard enough, he could even feel the slightly waxy texture of it when she’d grabbed him by his armor straps and pressed her lips to his as they raced after the Valkyrie. Unconsciously, he brought his fingers to his mouth as if he’d pull them away and find them to be stained red.

“And now, I’d like to invite Margaret Carter’s godson to come up and say a few words.”

A pointy elbow prodded at his side. Steve tilted his head towards Sam, a questioning furrow in his brow. Sam, with wide eyes, jerked his chin at the podium subtly, and Steve finally turned his gaze where he’d been avoiding.

It was Tony. Tony Stark was standing at the podium in a sharp suit, dark tinted glasses pushed up high on the bridge of his nose.

Steve felt ice creep up his chest and his breath hitched in his throat, like the cold sensation had punched the air out of his lungs. Tony had never even mentioned knowing Peggy, but Steve could slap himself. Peggy and Howard became close friends after the war, of course she knew Tony. Of course Howard would ask the most resilient and fiery woman he knew to be his son’s godmother.

Up at the podium, Tony cleared his throat. Steve couldn’t see his eyes behind the shades, but he’d never seen his friend so uncomfortable in front of a crowd. Tony fiddled with his cuff for a long second, before sighing minutely and pulling the glasses off.

Immediately, Steve could tell he’d been crying. His eyes were swollen and red rimmed. In fact, when the light hit his sallow cheeks just right, fresh tear tracks glistened on his face.

“Aunt Peggy wouldn’t want me to wear these things at her funeral,” Tony said, carefully folding the stems and slipping them into his jacket pocket. “She’s the one who taught me that trick, actually. That your clothes are your armor. It’s why she never had a hair out of place… I always admired that. But, I don’t need armor here, never in front of Aunt Peggy.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Steve as if to ask if he’d had any clue Tony had been his best girl’s godson. He shook his head and turned his full attention back to Tony, suddenly feeling jealous. He’d only known Peggy for a short period during the war. When he’d come out of the ice he’d almost been afraid to ask, to look at the files they’d given him of all his old friends and comrades. The pile which had the word ‘deceased’ stamped in bright red across most of them. It’d taken him a year to work up the courage to go visit Peggy in her nursing home he was ashamed to admit. They’d had such little time together.

And here Tony was with the privilege and honor of having known her his entire life.

“My first real memory of my Aunt Peggy was when I was five years old, the first of many times I’d been kidnapped,” Tony said, and Steve jolted in his seat at his too casual tone. “I was young, and scared, but I was only there for a handful of hours before Aunt Peggy busted down the door to rescue me.”

Steve watched Tony clench his fists on the podium as he took a second to just breathe.

“Sorry, I’m still having trouble even believing that such an immovable force like her could ever not be a steady presence in my life.” Another thoughtful pause. “She was a steady presence in a lot of people’s lives. Aunt Peggy just had that effect on people. She could find the good in anyone and drag it out of them kicking and screaming. And if there was no good in them, well, Aunt Peggy had a way of dealing with that too.”

Steve watched a ghost of a smile pass over Tony’s lips before it shattered and disappeared.

“She has been, and will continue to be, the most influential role model in my life, and someone like me could only hope to be a fraction as great as she is. Thank you,” Tony finished. As he stepped back from the podium to return to his seat, he quickly swiped a hand across his face before walking out of Steve’s line of sight.

Some undetermined amount of time later, the service was over. After Tony, it had all been another blur. Sam had left after Steve had asked for some time alone. He stayed among the pews, in the fractured, colored light of the beautiful stained-glass windows, until the church emptied out of everyone but the ghosts.

Everyone but Tony, who Steve found hadn’t even left his seat. Without really knowing what he was going to say, Steve approached his best friend in this new century. The man who had never taken formalities with him, who hadn’t been afraid to break him with his constant jabs and prods when attempting to pull him from the cocoon of his depression.

“You never told me you knew Peggy,” Steve said, quiet voice still carrying in the empty space.

Tony was staring at his hands. “Knew her?” he mumbled like the question amused him. Finally, he looked up. Steve had never seen those brown eyes so black. “She practically raised me, more than Howard ever did.”

“You know,” Steve found himself saying. “If I never went into the ice, you’d probably be my godson too.”

It was a joke, but Steve suddenly found himself wondering, not for the first time, what life with Peggy could have been like. Only, this fantasy played out different than it had the other tens of thousands of times. He’d seen pictures of Tony when he was a kid. He’d been small for his age, he was still small for his age, with cherub curls and the widest brown eyes. He wondered, vaguely, if Tony had always had a mouth as quick as his mind, or if there had been a time when his sharp edges hadn’t existed, were softened by baby fat and innocence.

Their relationship had always been sort of strained. The ghost of Howard lived in a lot of Tony’s actions and quirks. It had taken Steve time to learn separate Tony’s father from Tony himself, but once he did, Steve couldn’t believe how foolish he was to think they were the same person. And, he’d always had a suspicion that he’d been a part of Tony’s childhood in some capacity, or, at least, Captain America had. Tony had needed time too. Time to stop expecting Steve to lash out. Time to stop waiting for Steve pass judgment on him.

Their friendship had been forged in the fire of countless fights and tempered in late night discussions on the kitchen floor when neither had been able to sleep. It had taken hard work, and he wondered how much of that they could have bypassed if Steve had been there in his childhood. A different life, a different relationship.

As Steve considered this, he saw Tony turn it over in his mind as well. Everything between them was quiet for a long second, before a small, fragile smile crossed Tony’s lips again. “Cap, that might be the most terrifying thing you’ve ever said to me.”

~

The moment Maria Stark placed her baby in Peggy’s arms, she knew she was in love.

The little babe’s eyes had darkened from their baby blue, settling into an earthy brown that already held the promise of intelligence buried in them. He was born with a curly tuft of dark hair and his mother’s Italian skin.

“His name is Antonio,” Maria said, though there was a pinched quality to her smile. “Howard is insisting on the Americanized version of the name though. So, I guess it’s Anthony.”

Peggy refrained from rolling her eyes upon hearing that. Howard’s patriotism had grown to be on just the wrong side of fanatic in her opinion. She held out a perfectly manicured finger and watched in rapt fascination as Antonio reached out and clasped it in one chubby little baby fist.

She still couldn’t believe that Howard was a father. Well, actually, that wasn’t quite true. Given his promiscuous nature in his younger years, she should say she was surprised he wasn’t a father sooner.

Antonio squeezed her finger. Peggy smiled and leaned down to press her lips to his forehead, leaving a small stain of ruby lipstick.

~

Howard was never shy showing her godson off to the press. He touted his son’s accomplishments and bragged about his intelligence. The media lapped it up like the dogs they were. The world had their eyes on little Tony, and their teeth bared. They sat on their haunches, waiting, licking their chops. Little genius children had the potential to burn out, she knew. Sometimes, they burned out in spectacular, story-worthy ways, like a star gone supernova.

But they didn’t know her Antonio, not like they claimed to.

Tony was a curious child, eager to learn, eager to please, a beautiful mind prepared to absorb any new information it was presented with, ready to play with words, concepts, numbers, and churn out solutions and answers other kids couldn’t even dream of.

Howard took advantage of this. He drilled company politics and economic philosophy into his son from a young age. By four, Howard was reading Tony _The Prince_ and _The Wealth of Nations_ as bedtime stories. Peggy was pleased to note that Mr. Jarvis mostly handled Tony’s bedtime, so he also received a healthy dose of poetry and children’s books peppered in amongst Howard’s tactlessness.

She visited as often as she could when she wasn’t working, keeping them as inconspicuous as possible. Part of being director for a secret government agency was having enemies. And she’d be damned if she brought any negative attention down on Tony’s head.

When she felt he was old enough, Peggy bought a small stuffed bear for Tony. He didn’t have many toys, but she’d refrained from this particular purchase until she was certain he would be able to understand the significance behind it. So, on his fourth birthday, Peggy presented him with the Captain America bear and began regaling him with stories of Steve Rogers.

Tony was sitting on her lap in the rocking chair in his room and she was gently pushing them back and forth in a steady rhythm. He rested his head in the center of her chest, squishing the bear in his arms.

“Do you love Mr. Rogers?” he asked quietly, almost half asleep.

Peggy paused and the chair ceased its motions. “Yes, dear heart, I do,” she whispered into his curls. “But not as much as I love you.”

Tony giggled, the sound as clear as a bell. “Is that why daddy goes sometimes?” was his next question.

“What do you mean, Antonio?” she asked, pushing her fingers through his hair. It was getting a little on the long side. She’d mention it to Mr. Jarvis before she left.

“Well, daddy has mommy, and Jarvis has Ana, so daddy goes an ex-pi-dish-uns looking for him so you can have your person too,” he told her clumsily.

Peggy was aware that Howard had never given up on Steve. His obsession had crossed into a slightly unhealthy territory several trips ago. Over the years, his respect for the lost soldier had warped into possessive determination to recreate the serum. She thought this resurgence might have sprung from his hatred for Hank Pym, and the scientist’s work with his particles, but she’d never told him straight to his face. Years of knowing Howard told her he’d just dig his heels in further.

“Maybe,” she told Tony. The sentiment was sweet. “But I think the world could just use someone like Steve Rogers again.”

Tony’s little face scrunched up adorably. “Why would the world need Steve Rogers when it has Aunt Peggy?” he asked.

Peggy laughed.

~

The next few times Peggy saw Tony he was constantly toting around the bear with him. According to Mr. Jarvis, the two did not separate. It was a nightmare to get the little boy to relinquish it so it might be washed.

A month after Tony’s fifth birthday, Peggy visits and for the first time since she gave Tony his bear, he didn’t have it in his possession. She gently questioned Maria about its disappearance, but the Italian woman merely shakes her head and mutters something under her breath in her native tongue. Ana and Mr. Jarvis were visiting family, so she couldn’t ask the Starks’ trusty butler. She worries, initially, that Tony might have lost it, or worse, accidentally destroyed it.

“He’s in my room,” Tony told her nervously when she asked. “I didn’t lose it. When you gave it to me you told me it was important. I wouldn’t.”

For the rest of the day, his behavior was skittish. At three, he was whisked away for his summer lessons, and Peggy politely declined Maria’s offer for a drink and went to investigate. The bear was in Tony’s room, just like he’d assured her, but it wasn’t on his bed like she’d expected. Instead, it was on the shelf above his desk, the black beads it had for eyes pointing directly at the bed. The lamp below it cast its shadow all the way up the wall, distorting it to nightmarish proportions.

She left Stark Manor intending to return for supper and take care of some work while she could. When she did make it back, thirty minutes later than planned, it was to find Maria frazzled and legless, clutching a wine glass like it was a lifeline. 

“He’s gone! He’s gone!” she cried into Peggy’s blouse the moment she opened the door.

“Who?” Peggy demanded, grabbing Maria’s arms and helping her into a chair in the living room.

“Antonio!” Her godson’s name came out garbled from tears and an alcohol loosened tongue. Maria necked the glass of wine back like it was a shot and stood, intending to find the bottle, Peggy was sure, but Peggy pushed her back into the seat.

“Tell me everything,” Peggy said steadily despite her racing heart. “And for God’s sake, where is your husband?”

Howard, as it turned out, was pacing in his office, spluttering in anger that some would dare try to extort money from him. Fortunately, the men who had bribed Tony’s tutor into putting a couple of drops of chloral hydrate in Tony’s apple juice to knock him out and deliver him to a secret location were completely incompetent. Peggy was able to track down Tony within hours and exact her unholy vengeance on the scum who’d touched her godson.

She found him in the rusted bathroom of an abandoned cabin in the woods they’d been using as a base. He was curled up in the tub, rocking back and forth, silent tears pouring down his cheeks. When she’d said his name and pulled him into her arms, he’d immediately began babbling apologies.

“Dear heart, what could you possibly be apologizing for,” Peggy had asked. She began running her fingers through his hair, unobtrusively checking for any bumps and bruises. Thankfully, Tony didn’t have a mark on him. The men hadn’t been interested in harming a child, they’d only wanted Howard’s money.

“Dad said that Captain America punishes children who are bad,” Tony whined. He was burying his snotty nose into her shoulder, breaths coming out in wet pants. “And that my bear kept watch for him. So I must have done something bad! I’m sorry, Aunt Peggy, I didn’t mean to!”

Peggy kept her touches gentle and her words reassuring but anger burned in her gut. Howard had twisted Steve into Tony’s own personal bogeyman.

When she saw Tony safely returned to his room, she plucked the bear down from the shelf.

~

Since Tony’s kidnapping, Peggy wanted nothing to do with Howard or Maria. She thought their behavior during the crisis had been appalling. But Peggy was not prepared to punish Tony for his parent’s sins. She kept in touch with her godson, but instead of visiting Stark Manor, she took Tony out. They went to parks, museums, a variety of restaurants.

Tony never asked why his Aunt Peggy didn’t speak with his parents anymore.

Two years later, Mr. Jarvis called her on Christmas Eve. She was in the office looking over a case file when she picked it up.

“Mr. Stark has departed quite suddenly on another expedition looking for Captain Rogers,” Jarvis told her, tone sour like a finely aged pickle. “And I’m afraid Mrs. Stark must have lost something at the bottom of one of our wine bottles, though she doesn’t seem to know which one.”

“Nothing has changed, I see,” Peggy sighs, pressing her fingers into her temples.

“Quite,” Mr. Jarvis intoned. “I was wondering if you’d like to visit for Christmas? Cheer up little Anthony with a surprise visit from his favorite Aunt Peggy?”

Peggy pursed her lips and considered the desk full of work before her. “Of course,” she answered a beat later. “I’ll be there in a few hours.”

Mr. Jarvis greeted her with a brief but meaningful hug. Ana’s hug lasted for much longer as she thanked Peggy for coming and tried to ply her with cookies and eggnog. Tony was already asleep, so Peggy snuck into his room and sat on his bed, stroking his curls until his nose scrunched and his eyes fluttered open.

Immediately he was awake and alert and Peggy suddenly questioned the wisdom of waking a child on Christmas Eve.

“Aunt Peggy!” he cried, throwing his whole body into hers.

Peggy returned his enthusiastic embrace, which was more like an underpowered tackle, bones creaking. She wasn’t getting any younger, and Tony wasn’t getting any lighter. “Hello, dear heart. Happy Christmas!”

Tony laughed, like he always did at her and Jarvis’ British expressions. “I’m so glad you’re here!” he enthused. “I made you the absolute best thing for Christmas and I didn’t know when I’d get to see you but I wanted you to get it as soon as possible! This is great! Hold on!”

He scrambled off the bed, kicking the covers onto the floor as he went. As Peggy bent over and began fixing the sheets, he pulled a small box from his closet. It was meticulously wrapped in shiny red paper and a gold bow. Peggy knows immediately that this is Mr. Jarvis’s handiwork.

“Tony, it’s not Christmas yet, love. I shouldn’t open your gift early,” Peggy told him when he shoved it into her hands.

Tony pointed at the clock. “It’s 12:13!” he said. “It’s Christmas, technically. Please, Aunt Peggy? Please?”

She relents in the face of cold logic and begins to unravel the bow and carefully peel the tape back so as not to ruin the paper. Tony squirms on the bed impatiently, but does not berate her further. The top of the plain brown box pops off to reveal a tube of lipstick. “It’s lovely, Tony,” Peggy tells him, pulling the silver casing from the tissue paper. It’s heavier than a tube of lipstick should be, she notes.

Tony, apparently, can’t handle it anymore. He grabs the tube from her, and she has half a mind to scold him for it, but then he’s eagerly babbling, “It’s not just a tube of lipstick! It’s a compact Taser!” he tells her proudly, twisting the top off. “It’s so you can be safe when you’re out fighting bad guys. You just point it and twist the tube and it shoots out 1,200 volts up to 20 feet.”

Peggy is stunned, in part by the ingeniousness of the compact devise, but mostly by Tony’s desire to help protect her. SHIELD has had Tasers for a few years, but nowhere near the discreet size of Tony’s. She was sure she’d find use for the faux-lipstick in the future.

“Thank you, Tony,” she said, kissing his forehead and slipping the tube into her pocket. “Really, this is brilliant.”

Tony beamed at her. “Can-?”

“No, you may open your presents when it’s really Christmas morning, not technically Christmas morning, you little pedant.”

~

Tony is a teenager before Peggy is ready to admit it, and rushing through his high school career at an alarming rate. The media attention he received from Howard releasing his IQ score when he turned 13 had barely cooled off before it was bearing down on Tony Stark once again for graduating at the ripe age of 15 and heading off to MIT to study mechanical engineering.

Howard was unable to attend the ceremony due to Stark Industries business, and Maria was in the midst of another major depressive episode, so she was staying in an acute care facility, not that the media was aware. Tony pretends to be unbothered by this, but Peggy can see past his plastic smile and saccharine happiness.

His valedictorian speech is full of empty words, but the crowd applauds raucously anyway. Peggy can hear their whispers. “That’s Stark’s boy,” they say. “He’s the future.”

No one asks Tony for pictures when the ceremony is done. No one invites Tony to a party or to dinner. He stands alone in the crowd, at least, he does until Ana and Mr. Jarvis descend upon him with their congratulations, Peggy along with them.

His face splits with the first genuine grin she’s seen all day.

At 16, Tony steals headlines in all major news sources. Some showered praise on the young boy for his accomplishment of winning MIT’s 4th annual Robot Design Award, others brought attention to the many photos and anecdotes of Party Boy Stark and his escapades at parties all across campus.

Peggy is forced to step into his parent’s place once again, reading her godson the riot act for his behavior. Unfortunately, it seems Tony has inherited Howard’s pigheaded stubbornness, and he’s hell-bent on self-destruction, rebelling, desperate for attention, but not hers.

She’s not sure why, but by Tony’s college graduation, the stories tapered off into a trickle, and then blessedly, ceased completely. Peggy meets the angel behind this miracle at graduation. James Rhodes, she decides when she shakes his hand, is good enough for her godson.

Then, everything came to a dramatic halt when Tony was 19. Ana was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and deteriorated quickly. Within months she was in hospice, and then passing on quietly, taking Mr. Jarvis’ heart with her. It didn’t matter, because not two months after her loss, Jarvis followed her in the car crash that wasn’t quite a car crash, which took Howard and Maria too.

Peggy was ashamed to say she lied to Tony about the circumstances of his parent’s and beloved butler’s death.

Despite her disagreements with Howard later in life, she found herself mourning for her old friend. The man he had been. But she didn’t have time to process the layers of grief she was feeling, because Tony had switched off. When he looked at her, his eyes were dead and he’d become nearly unreachable.

After the funeral he’d gone back to the Manor and trashed Howard’s study. She’d found him amongst the rubble of shattered glass and destroyed shelves and put him to bed in his room like he was five years old again. The next day, he’d run away to Malibu and she hadn’t lay eyes on him since, hadn’t heard his voice.

Peggy was relegated to learning about her godson’s movements through the news like a common sheep.

~

He came back to her a year later.

It takes receiving a bullet to the gut and almost dying for Tony to drag his ass out of self-isolation and to her bedside, tears streaming down his face and apologies pouring from his mouth like a broken faucet.

“Dear heart,” Peggy whispered, reaching out her hand and cupping his cheek. She noted, with distaste, that her hand was wrinkled and had developed a liver spot over the course of the years. Still, her nail polish persisted, the perfect shade of dark red.

Tony sniffled at the endearment, holding her hand in place, as if she might withdraw her touch. “Aunt Peggy,” he mumbled, voice rough.

“I’m happy to see you,” she said, trying to put all the unspoken forgiveness she could into the one statement, over-stuffing it like an American turkey at Thanksgiving. She used her thumb to wipe away the wetness on his cheeks, but it was quickly replaced.

“I can’t lose you too,” Tony mumbled. His breathing hitched and he pressed the hand not holding hers to his face. “Please, I can’t- I don’t know what I’d do.”

She felt some dampness gather in the corner of her eyes too. “Antonio…”

“No, please. You- You’re not young like you used to be, Aunt Peggy. This line of work- please, it’s going to kill you,” he begged.

If Peggy wanted to lighten the mood, she might have scolded him for commenting on a lady’s age. But Tony was too close to breaking for her to not take his plea seriously. His shoulders were hunched, his whole body quivering. He’d always had the longest eyelashes, and now they were all clumped together from the salty-stickiness of his tears.

And Peggy was pushing 70, she wasn’t a spring chicken anymore, even she could admit that. A deep-seated fire in her gut, which had been stoked in her from a young age and had yet to burn itself out, wanted her to keep pushing the limits. But then she looked at her supplicant godson, and his tears dampened the flame slightly. Someone had to be alive to keep Tony on the straight and narrow. Any other decision would be self-serving, and too many people in Tony’s life had been selfish.

So, she cupped Tony’s face in both her hands and pulled his head down so she could press her lips to his forehead. “Okay.”

~

Tony took over his father’s company, and it flourished under his care. Peggy watched proudly from a distance in her retirement. It might have been boring, but her godson always found ways to keep her on her toes, even in her advanced years.

He’d show up randomly and whisk her away to other countries. She’d travelled a lot in her youth, but never for pleasure. It was nice to be able to visit historic landmarks and enjoy dinner in fancy restaurants without having to worry about dodging bullets. In particular, she loved visiting home and showing Tony around London. They went at least once a year.

Her godson continued to be self-destructive, though between James, herself, and a young lady who went by Pepper, they managed to curb the worst of his behavior. And if Tony ever stepped too far over the line, well, Peggy had her ways of dealing with that.

And then there was this superhero business.

“Don’t think just because I’m 87 years old I won’t shove my heel up your ass, Antonio,” Peggy found herself yelling into the phone one evening in 2008. “When I told you all those stories about Steve, I was hoping you’d learn _not_ to be such a self-sacrificing idiot!”

“Aunt Peggy,” Tony tried to say seriously, but even from thousands of miles away, she could tell he was smiling.

“Bad enough you got yourself kidnapped! My poor heart can’t take this kind of stress, do you hear me?” she continued to scold. “Now I have to see you flying around in a ridiculous metal suit on the news!”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, Aunt Peggy, you’re right,” Tony cut in.

And good. Some things shouldn’t change. “You bloody better believe I’m right!”

He doesn’t say anything for a second, and if Peggy didn’t know her godson would never if he valued his life, she might have thought he’d hung up on her.

Then, “But I’m not giving Iron Man up.”

“_Antonio_,” she growled.

.

.

.

.

Howard comes by her room sometimes. He sits in the chair across from her bed, always with a bouquet of flowers, though the variety was constantly changing. He told her fantastical stories about Captain America. That he’d been rescued from the ice to fight aliens in the twenty-first century. They’re ludicrous, and she tells him so, with a smile on her face the whole time, of course.

Sometimes he looks so sad. Peggy can never pinpoint why.

“Is it stress from expecting the baby?” she asks one day, holding one of his hands between both of hers.

He looks shocked for a second. But then he swallows hard, and says, “Yeah, it must be.”

Peggy squeezes. “Don’t worry so much about it, Howard. I’m sure, buried somewhere deep inside you, there’s at least one paternal instinct,” she assures him.

He chuckles and shakes his head. “Well, I don’t know about that.”

“No, trust me. When the baby comes, you’ll love it.” When Howard remains uncertain, she finishes. “I certainly already love that baby like it’s my own.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated :)
> 
> Constructive criticism welcome!


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